Right, I think it's well-known that Joyce misunderstood the then-recently-published result on the number of digits in 9^(9^9) when he wrote that bit of Ulysses. He wasn't as good at math as Bloom is supposed to be. --Michael On Thu, Nov 16, 2017 at 11:36 AM, Tom Karzes <karzes@sonic.net> wrote:
I would parse "the 9th power of the 9th power of 9" as "the 9th power of (the 9th power of 9)", i.e. (9^9)^9 = 9^(9*9), which is a vastly smaller number.
For the standard mathematical precedence of 9^9^9 = 9^(9^9), I think it would have to be worded something like "(the 9th power of 9)th power of 9", i.e. "the 9th power of 9th power of 9" (which admittedly sounds a bit odd). But the inclusion of the last "the" seems to rule this out. I would guess that the author never even considered the distinction.
As another example, in The Number of the Beast, Heinlein made the same mistake: He said the number 666 was really meant to be 6^6^6, and then proceeded to group it as (6^6)^6, i.e. 6^(6*6). In this case the grouping was very explicit from the text. Sadly, I doubt he even realized that the standard grouping is 6^(6^6), and that this number is vastly larger. Reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Number_of_the_Beast_(novel)
Tom
Michael Kleber writes:
Did everyone come to 9^(9^9) because of its mention in James Joyce's Ulysses, or for some independent reason?
http://www.online-literature.com/james_joyce/ulysses/17/
--------- Why did he not elaborate these calculations to a more precise result?
Because some years previously in 1886 when occupied with the problem of the quadrature of the circle he had learned of the existence of a number computed to a relative degree of accuracy to be of such magnitude and of so many places, e.g., the 9th power of the 9th power of 9, that, the result having been obtained, 33 closely printed volumes of 1000 pages each of innumerable quires and reams of India paper would have to be requisitioned in order to contain the complete tale of its printed integers of units, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions, the nucleus of the nebula of every digit of every series containing succinctly the potentiality of being raised to the utmost kinetic elaboration of any power of any of its powers. ---------
--Michael
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